you are aware of any in your locality, ask the people involved if you can interview them about what’s working well and what they’d do differently next time: the findings may be applicable to your training program. And there is much useful research into professional learning and development emerging from schools which people involved in vocational training can learn from.
And, of course, boys love diggers! So using a local erosion and sediment control guideline can be a wonderful way of getting boys interested in class. Boys and girls alike will be intrigued by the physics and mathematics of erosion and sediment control, and the biology of impacts on water bodies of accelerated sedimentation and the benefits of its control. Longer term, this can also help address the critical shortage of engineering and environmental professionals in the workforce.
Figure 1 Becoming an environmental expert in your sector
There is a growing body of environmental resources for teachers of many other subjects, and they can also make good use of information from environmental management and research agencies; many provide curriculum-related material for schools. Some examples are listed in ‘How to find out more’.
We’ll come back to how adults learn and why it’s important to know this in Chapter 7.
I keep waiting for the guillotine to fall on paper-based notebooks, but, thankfully, it has yet to happen.
Ed Bernacki
This book is designed to be used with the free downloadable Action Planner that accompanies it – follow the instructions at the very front of this book to download it.
The Action Planner asks leading questions and provides note sheets and mindmaps that will prompt reflection, research and action for your environmental training program. You don’t need to use every action sheet – there are over 50 – just pick the ones you need most, based on the content of the chapters.
There will be regular prompts to use particular action sheets throughout this book. Make sure you capture all the information, ideas and learnings you generate as you set up, run and review your program. This will be your gift to posterity!
Inspira[c]tion, n. A sudden happy idea that makes you draw in your breath with excitement and gets you out there doing great things (with apologies to the Concise Oxford Dictionary17).
When you’ve gone through each chapter of the book and used the action sheets you want, fill out the Inspira[c]tion Sheet at the front of the Action Planner for your priority chapters, choosing the option that works best for translating your inspirations into actions.
Oh, and about getting yourself to inspirac[t]ion – that action sheet includes some tips from Ed Bernacki18 to capture the different types of knowledge you’ll create as you go:
1.Insights: capture your ‘aha!’ moments.
2.Ideas: when you hear, read or say something that gives you an idea, write it down immediately!
3.Questions: capture insightful and exploring questions that you can think about later.
4.Quotes: when you hear, read or say something that’s worth repeating, write it down.
5.Actions: what can you do as a result of using the book and Action Planner?
Linda McDermott19, one of the most colorful people I know, uses symbols in the margin to color-code her responses to conference speakers in a way that is similar to Ed’s list; she puts a heart, a light bulb or an exclamation mark to highlight the best things she hears. She uses the letters TD for “To Do afterwards”, and quotation marks so she can attribute quotes to speakers who said something great – or that she herself thought of for later use. As a dancer, she uses a musical note in the margin, to tell her there is a tune she might use, or lyrics from a song that help her remember something. And she’ll write a dollar sign in the margin to denote an opportunity to make or save money. Linda also takes a day after the conference to review them all and make sure she does something with the best ones.
The last sheet in the Action Planner is a work program planning sheet that will help you focus on ‘first things first’. Once you’ve identified your priorities, you can go back to work in more detail on the chapters you need – inspira[c]tion in practice!
Every topic in this book could be expanded into another book: this book is a high-level overview so you can see what you are getting into! There are countless print and online resources for each topic, so I’ve provided links for the main headings in ‘How to find out more’ at the end of the book.
You may have realized already that there are seven steps to successful environmental training – and nine chapters in this book. Table 1 shows how they relate to each other.
Table 1 How the seven steps relate to the chapter headings of this book
| The nine chapters | The seven steps |
| 1: About this book / how to use this bookYou are here! Chapter 1 also contains a potted history of the evolution of Auckland’s erosion and sediment control program, because my long association with this program helped me identify the seven elements that made the program so successful for so long – and will make yours a success, too. | 1: Partnership: the fundamental platformEvery chapter refers to partnership in some way – it’s the must-have element of successful environmental training! |
| 2: The 7-step modelA six-page overview of each of the seven steps, which emerged from my analysis of the factors that contributed to the success of Auckland’s program. | 2: Research: building a robust caseEnvironmental research gets an honorable mention in Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9, but doesn’t have its own chapter: this is because you know your research needs better than I do. Training-focused research is in Chapter 5. |
| 3: Case studies of different environmental training programsA detailed description of the six elements of the US City of Charlotte’s successful erosion and sediment control program is followed by seven case studies of training programs on different environmental issues. You can analyze each of these in terms of my seven steps and the City of Charlotte’s six steps in order to develop your own series of steps to success. | 3: Monitoring, evaluation and reviewThis topic is so important that it has a chapter of its own – Chapter 6, Measuring success.It also has an honorable mention in Chapters 2 and 8. |
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